2025 Team Racing World Championship at New York Yacht Club - Day 2
by Michelle Slade 31 May 06:00 BST
May 28 - June 1, 2025
Team Racing World Championship at New York Yacht Club Day 2 © Paul Todd / OUTSIDEIMAGES.COM
A thrilling action-packed series of races on Day 2 of the 2025 Team Racing World Championship saw the three teams representing the United States consolidate at the top of the leaderboard.
After 14 races sailed, the Corinthian Yacht Club (Marblehead, Mass.) finished the day with 12 points, Newport Harbor Yacht Club has 11 points after 15 races sailed and the New York Yacht Club has 10 points after 14 races. While heavy fog throughout the day caused sporadic delays, the Race Committee was able to complete Round Robin 1 and make significant progress on Round Robin 2 aided by a consistent southerly in the mid-teens.
Hot on the heels of the top tier teams, Kiwi Racing picked up their game today finishing with 9 points over 13 races. Skipper Reuben Cobett raced at Harbour Court in the 2005 edition of the event when he was 18 and he's happy to be back.
"It's great to be back. Newport is a lovely place to sail," says Cobett. "The breeze was good today, and that's what we like. We don't have any 2v2 team racing in New Zealand, so we've been a bit slow getting into the rhythm. As a team we haven't sailed the boat before, so we've been getting used to the venue and the boats. Today we started better, we were able to sort a few things out and focus on understanding the game. We've got speed in the boats now and we'll just keep charging. The competition is great; we all love racing, and that's why we're here!"
Baltimore Sailing Club from Ireland won most of their races today losing only to the American teams. With limited experience in the 2v2 format, the team is fairly new to the game but learning quickly. They're holding steady with 9 points after 15 races and are happy to be improving race to race.
"We sailed pretty well today. We wanted to work on our communications based on how we did yesterday and managed to fix some of those issues although new ones started to pop up towards the end of the day; we have more to work on tomorrow," laughs Johnny Durcan, skipper. "We thought our boat handling had a marked improvement from yesterday, as well as communication on board between the sailors on each boat. We gave more specific roles to everybody, and I think it was teamwork that gave us an advantage today. The 2v2 format is very exciting although it's a bit hard for us to get our heads around at times; we're coming across a lot of really new situations race to race that we haven't experienced before."
Deputy Race Officer Ned Jones notes that there's always a warmup period on the first day or two in the team racing regattas he's observed. "There is definitely a gap between the top teams and the less experienced teams at this point, but that usually closes as the regatta moves along."
"We're seeing some impressive racing even among the teams that may not have been very red hot on Day 1. We always see a learning curve with those teams but by the time Day 2 rolls around, competitors have learned to sail the boats and understand the format, which is what we began to see today," Jones says.
Among the teams who finally got on the leaderboard on Day 2 was Bermuda SA with their first win. Crew Katrina Williams acknowledged her team made big improvements today.
"I think our boat speed is better and we had fewer boat handling errors which really freed us up to do more team racing. We were really getting off the line well and kind of staying in the game; every race was a lot closer than the one before. We're improving race by race, and I think our focus now needs to be on mark roundings which are so tricky! We're also communicating better about needing help from our other teammates but we're really having fun, and today the conditions were great."
Swedish team Gamla Stans YS are on the board with three points and are happy with the work they accomplished today.
"It's been a long day but we're happy with the few points that we got although we hoped for more," says crew Gustav Kjellberg. "We got into some interesting situations and our races were good overall. We need to work on our starts - we've been a bit slow off the line. But we're learning so much, there are so many good teams to learn from and so many different situations to consider. We enjoyed the stronger wind today and it's been interesting dealing with the current - we're not used to that!"
Lori Lowe, crew on Team Bahamas notes that only one of her teammates had set foot on a Sonar before this week and most of the team has never raced before. They are in Newport to improve their skills and are thrilled to have won two races today.
"It feels fantastic, we're having a great time and the heavier breeze today was great. Most of our team have only ever sailed dinghies and rarely anything like a Sonar; these are big boats for us but today was a lot better than yesterday and we felt like we were in the game which feels good. I think all the teams are pretty close and I think we're within reach as we become more familiar with the boat. We'd like to thank the New York Yacht Club, the race organizers, Race Committee and umpires for being here. We came to have a good time, and we're having a good time!"
Racing resumes on Saturday May 31, with Day 3 of the 2025 Team Racing World Championship. Current results are available here.